He described the bank customers with him at the committee meeting as “good, hard-working, decent people”. He said what the banks had engaged in amounted to “financial deceit on a grand scale”.

Mr Kissane added: “I want to personally thank the bravery of the four people because I know how difficult it is to come out publicly on this matter.

“But to come out and speak about your own personal account…. people don’t cry deliberately in my office, they cry for a reason. We’re asking on behalf of the thousands – and the numbers are continuing to grow, the children and families – who the hell did they [the banks] think they were?”

Scores of people have been put out of their homes over the past eight years after being refused their entitlement to a tracker mortgage.

The Central Bank previously put the number of directly-related repossessions at 100. It also previously estimated up to 15,000 borrowers were affected by the issue across 15 lenders and is due to update the committee next week.

Mr Kissane has now put this figure at 30,000 as more and more people step forward every week and the banks continually have to increase their own estimates as they are being caught out.Last week Ulster Bank said it will have to pay more than €100,000 to some of its 3,500 customers caught up in the industry-wide overcharging scandal.

Previously it was revealed that 2,100 Bank of Ireland mortgages were restored to tracker rates when the issue was identified in 2010 and 2011.

There were also about 1,400 cases of customers being denied tracker rates involving Springboard Mortgages, which was a subsidiary of PTSB.

The Central Bank cannot force banks to compensate home owners for tracker issues before 2013.

The refusal of banks to allow customers to move on to trackers first emerged as far back as 2010 – the year taxpayers were lumbered with a multibillion-euro bailout of Ireland’s banks.